PositivATI
- Brand
- Partnership For Drug-Free
- Year
- 2015
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Other
- Mechanic
- Arcade & Action
- Platform
- Social
- Agency
- PriyaPR
Objective
Above the Influence needed to meet teens where negative peer pressure actually shows up — social feeds, not another PSA. With research showing teens hit substance-related content dozens of times a day online, the program wanted to give them a tool to push back on their own terms rather than just advertise at them.
Solution
Landing on positivati.com drops the player straight into an arcade slingshot gallery, no sign-up required. Real, live negative tweets fly across the screen carried by two cartoon bird species, and the player pulls back a slingshot and fires discs to knock them down for points. Each level climbs higher — from a backyard up through the sky and into space — so clearing a level literally means rising above the influence. Knocking down a tweet does something outside the game too: it posts a positive reply straight into that negative hashtag's thread on Twitter, so every hit doubles as a small public comeback. The same build ran on phones, tablets and desktops, and on touchscreen kiosks at ATI events around the country.
- 1
The player opens positivati.com on any device — phone, tablet, desktop or an event touchscreen — and lands directly inside the game, with no menus or instructions to get through first.
- 2
The stated goal is simple and shown up front: knock down as many negative tweets as possible. There is a single control and a single objective.
- 3
Cartoon birds — two species, the Jenoralia and the Brodilla — fly across the screen carrying real, hateful tweets pulled live from Twitter, so the on-screen text is genuine content rather than written copy.
- 4
The player aims and fires a slingshot loaded with positive discs at the passing birds — drag-and-release on touch, point-and-shoot on desktop — putting a Duck Hunt–style shooting gallery behind a slingshot instead of a gun.
- 5
A successful hit plays the bird's impact animation, the bird drops the tweet it was carrying and flees, and the player scores points for the tweet taken down.
- 6
Each hit also acts outside the game: a positive tweet is posted into the real Twitter thread of the hashtag just knocked down, so play interrupts an actual stream of negativity as it happens.
- 7
Clearing a wave advances the player to the next level, and levels rise vertically from a backyard through the sky into space, with the topmost level standing for rising above the influence — the campaign's tagline realized as the game's end state.
- 8
The same build runs as a standing installation on touchscreens and tablets at teen events, including its debut at National ATI Day in Washington, D.C.
